“Well then, why say ‘It’s time’? Why give up?”
“Because a few years ago, you remember I had a job down in Texas? Texas, Arthur! But it was good money, and Clark said, ‘I support you, this is important, let’s drive down together, I’ve never seen Texas.’ And we got in the car and drove down—it was a good four days of driving—and we each got to make one rule about the road trip. Mine was that we could only sleep in places with a neon sign. His was that wherever we went, we had to eat the special. If they didn’t have a special, we had to find another place. Oh my God, Arthur, the things I ate! One time the special was crab casserole. In Texas.”
“I know, I know, you told me about it. That trip sounded great.”
“It was maybe the best road trip we’ve ever taken; we just laughed and laughed the whole way. Looking for neon signs. And then we got to Texas and he kissed me good-bye and got on a plane back home, and there I was for four months. And I thought, Well, that was nice.”
“I don’t understand. That sounds like you guys being happy.”
“Yes. And I was happy in my little house in Texas, going to work. And I thought, Well, that was nice. That was a nice marriage.”
“But you broke up with him. Something’s wrong. Something failed.”
“No! No, Arthur, no, it’s the opposite! I’m saying it’s a success. Twenty years of joy and support and friendship, that’s a success. Twenty years of anything with another person is a success. If a band stays together twenty years, it’s a miracle. If a comedy duo stays together twenty years, they’re a triumph. Is this night a failure because it will end in an hour? Is the sun a failure because it’s going to end in a billion years? No, it’s the fucking sun. Why does a marriage not count? It isn’t in us, it isn’t in human beings, to be tied to one person forever. Siamese twins are a tragedy. Twenty years and one last happy road trip. And I thought, Well, that was nice. Let’s end on success.”
“You can’t do this, Lewis. You’re Lewis and Clark. Lewis and fucking Clark, Lewis. It’s my only hope out there that gay men can last.”
“Oh, Arthur. This is lasting. Twenty years is lasting! And this has nothing to do with you.”
“I just think it’s a mistake. You’re going to go out there on your own and find out there’s nobody as good as Clark. And he’s going to find the same thing.”
“He’s getting married in June.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“I’ll tell you the truth, it was on that road trip we met a nice young man in Texas. A painter down in Marfa. We met him together, and they kept in touch, and now Clark’s going to marry him. He’s lovely. He’s wonderful.”
“You’re going to the wedding, apparently.”
“I’m reading a poem at the wedding.”
“You are out of your mind. I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Clark. I’m heartbroken. But I know it’s not about me. I want you to be happy. But you’re deluded! You can’t go to his wedding! You can’t think it’s all fine, it’s all great! You’re just in a phase of denial. You’re divorcing your partner of twenty years. And that’s sad. It’s okay to be sad, Lewis.”
“It’s true things can go on till you die. And people use the same old table, even though it’s falling apart and it’s been repaired and repaired, just because it was their grandmother’s. That’s how towns become ghost towns. It’s how houses become junk stores. And I think it’s how people get old.”
“Have you met someone?”
“Me? I think maybe I’ll go it on my own. Maybe I’m better that way. Maybe I was always better that way and it was just that when I was young, I was so scared, and now I’m not scared. I’ll still have Clark. I can still always call Clark and ask his advice.”
“Even after everything?”
“Yes, Arthur.”
They talk a bit longer, and the sky shifts above them until it is quite late. “Arthur,” Lewis says at one point, “did you hear that Freddy locked himself in the bathroom the night before the wedding?” But Less is not listening; he is thinking about how he used to visit Lewis and Clark over the years, about the dinner parties and Halloweens and times he slept on their couch, too tipsy to get home. “Good night, Arthur.” Lewis gives his old friend a salute and heads into the darkness, so Less is left alone by the dying fire. A brightness catches his eye: Mohammed’s cigarette as he moves from tent to tent, buttoning the flaps like he is tucking in sleeping children for the night. From the furthermost tent, the tech whiz moans from his bed. From somewhere, a camel complains, followed by a young man’s voice soothing it—do they sleep beside the creatures? Do they sleep under this most excellent canopy, this majestical roof, this amazing mirrored coverlet, the stars? Look, you: there are enough stars for everyone tonight, and among them shine the satellites, those counterfeit coins. He reaches for, but does not catch, a falling star. Less, at last, goes to bed. But he cannot stop thinking of what Lewis has told him. Not the story about the ten years, but the idea of being alone. He realizes that, even after Robert, he never truly let himself be alone. Even here, on this trip: first Bastian, then Javier. Why this endless need for a man as a mirror? To see the Arthur Less reflected there? He is grieving, for sure—the loss of his lover, his career, his novel, his youth—so why not cover the mirrors, rend the fabric over his heart, and just let himself mourn? Perhaps he should try alone.
He chuckles to himself in the moments before sleep. Alone: impossible to imagine. That life seems as terrifying, as un-Lessian, as that of a castaway on a desert island.
The sandstorm does not start until dawn.
As Less lies sleepless in bed, his novel appears in his mind. Swift. What a title. What a mess. Swift. Where is his editor when he needs her? His editrix, as he used to call her: Leona Flowers. Traded years ago in the card game of publishing to some other house, but Less recalls how she took his first novels, shaggy with magniloquent prose, and made them into books. So clever, so artful, so good at persuading him of what to cut. “This paragraph is so beautiful, so special,” she might say, pressing her French-manicured hands to her chest, “that I’m keeping it all to myself!” Where is Leona now? High in some tower with some new favorite author, trying her same old lines: “I think the chapter’s absence will echo throughout the novel.” What would she tell him? More likable, make Swift more likable. That’s what everyone’s saying; nobody cares what this character suffers. But how do you do it? It’s like making oneself more likable. And at fifty, Less muses drowsily, you’re as likable as you’re going to get.